The Last Enemy
by Ari Vela
Summary: Harry visits his parents' graves months after Voldemort's demise. Short, fluffy one-shot set after DH. Harry creates a new Christmas tradition.


The hard snow crunched obnoxiously under his weary feet, giving way to his determined weight. The mouth of Godric's Hollow was opening wide and threatening to swallow him whole. For the moment, it consumed him.

_Kind of ironic, _he thought. _Hollow_.

He was starting to feel more whole than he could ever remember. It was consummate. After years of prophecy and the impending promise of death, the world seemed wonderfully empty, waiting to be filled again with promising futures.

Harry had exchanged burdens. Once bound by a bequest of the wizarding world he once knew, to save it as it fell into what seemed like an inevitable fate, crafted by dark hands. Now, he was charged to build back that same world, with remains of family trust and fractured faith as a foundation. The difference in shouldering these weights swelled inside Harry, stifling his breath and almost pressuring his heart to the breaking point. Promise. Boundless, limitless possibilities.

_Ironic, indeed, _he thought.

He marched on, the snow continued to submit inanimately to his ambitious feet, much like his proverbial shackles to certain death had so many months ago.

It had taken weeks for reality to slowly permeate his exhausted mind. Voldemort was dead; the prophecy was meaningless. It had only been months, but it felt like years ago.

He entered the village; quiet cottages stood in silent salute on either side of the cobblestone alley. His head bowed against the winter's unforgiving wind, he let his legs follow a familiar path. He passed through the village square, affording a look to the cemetery before turning down a side street. He heard carolers in the pub.

_Happy Christmas, Mom, Dad, _he thought.

He finally looked up when he reached the ruined cottage, a large fraction of its roof blown apart, beheaded by an infamously renegade Killing Curse. It hadn't changed since the Christmas Eve he last visited the accidental monument. The hedge was still overgrown, fragments of rubble still lay scattered in the head-high grass. The skeleton of a crib and marred carpet could be seen through the bare rafters.

Harry heaved a sigh, heavy with contrition and pride. The faded memories and the implications born from this wreckage still weighed heavily on his heart. His former home looked so forlorn, yet stood so tall. He touched the gate with a gloved hand; a familiar sign sprouted from the tangled weeds. Letters glowed brightly on old wood.

* * *

><p><strong>On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,<strong>

**Lily and James Potter lost their lives.**

**Their son, Harry, remains the only**

**wizard to have survived the Killing Curse.**

**This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left**

**in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters**

**and as a reminder of the violence**

**that tore apart their family.**

* * *

><p>The same graffiti still framed the old sign; Harry ran an affectionate finger across the well-wishing marks. He stared at the ruins for what felt like hours, some part of him still grieving the chance lost for a completely normal childhood that lay buried in the once-whole remnants upstairs. Since Voldemort's demise, his memories of that night weren't as sharp as the once were. The cruel laughter that once haunted his deepest sleep was banished.<p>

Harry turned his head down the street, towards the village square. As he took his hand from the gate, the sign sunk slowly back into the earth, ready to inform the next passerby. His footfalls echoed through the empty street, icy friction piercing the air.

He reached the statue that sat in the middle of the square, depicting his mother and father holding a baby Harry. Carolers from the pub laced with his thoughts; he shared a smile with his stone-hewn parents. As physically alone as he was, he felt whole and accompanied. The warm joy spilling from the pub served as a worthy comrade, despite the cold chasing patrons indoors and emptying the streets. He continued behind the church that bordered the square, where his parents lay among other relatives he had never known. He pushed through the kissing gate, releasing the cold, rusted steel once he had slipped inside the cemetery.

He stopped his pursuit only at Ignotus Peverell's grave before continuing on. In his mind, Hermione had only cleared the snow off of the ancient grave yesterday. The fact that a year had past since his last visit still didn't feel like a complete reality. As another anniversary to commemorate, in place of others he had lost to the prophecy and Voldemort's cruel intentions, he would return every year to speak with his parents. To honor their first encounter as living seeking the dead. As a son properly grieving his mother and father without fear of the consequences. He would always share Christmas Eve with Lily and James Potter. A melancholy tradition to some, perhaps. But, the hollow in his chest inflated with pride whenever he saw their epitaph. Their courage and love would never fail to render him breathless.

Harry stopped in front of their graves, a single headstone uniting them in death.

**_The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death._**

The statement, on the surface, screamed Voldemort-like sentiments, but Harry knew the difference. Voldemort had feared death; his parents faced it with a brave-faced love. His father, wandless, laid his life down simply to buy his wife and son valuable time. His mother, cast aside so quickly, died to protect Harry. To swaddle him with a sacrifice he still wasn't sure he fully understood.

And because of that, Harry's mother and father faced something Voldemort feared. It made them far greater, far more admired and endeared, even if only by himself.

He pulled out his wand, and wordlessly conjured a Christmas garland inlaid with the whitest lilies. He knelt and wrapped it around the headstone's base, like a scarf knit by carefully kind hands.

_When we finally meet, I want to hear your story, _he thought. _I want to hear you speak again, alive like nothing I've ever seen. And when that time comes, I won't fear it. Because you didn't._

Harry sat there for ages, telling his parents' headstone about Ginny and his plans to propose to her, and how Kingsley had begun building a new Ministry of Magic. He laughed about Ron and Hermione finally admitting their true feelings to one another, and he mourned with them about the loss of his friend, Fred Weasley. He shared his grief over Dumbledore's death, a grief he knew they would understand.

_Do not pity the dead, Harry, _Dumbledore's voice resounded in his packed head. _Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love._

And Harry's heart surged, overflowing with regard and affection for the parents so revered for their sacrifice, for the man who trusted him implicitly, for his friends who followed him blindly, for the survivors who overcame fear and oppression to build something wholly their own in an uncertain future.

_All a monument to you, _he thought. _A monument to everything you are, to everything you've taught me, even in your absence._

Harry closed his eyes against the impending tears, and his heart beat with a furious pride.


End file.
